


Lay me gently in the cold dark earth.

by reygrets



Series: Broken people let themselves be eaten. [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: A vague canon rewrite of DDS3's end, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Baggage, Enthusiastic Consent, Everything Hurts and I'm Dying, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Hurt/Comfort, I Won't Say I'm In Love, Ma'am as a love language, Meg I'm sorry, Mutual Pining, Past Abuse, Past Drug Addiction, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, dds3, mentions of abuse, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2019-09-03 06:49:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16759309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reygrets/pseuds/reygrets
Summary: No grave can hold my body down -- I'll crawl home to her.a.k.a Karen Page and the no good very bad decade, where in the world is Frank Castle, and canon didn't suit my needs so here's a fix it fic where Frank shows up at the end of DDS3, and onward.





	1. Chapter 1

She remembers the first time she’d felt it; not unlike vengeance, parallel to rage. 

Matt’s apartment, it’s dim but not dark and the taste of mediocre Thai food had her sipping her wine greedily, trying to scrub the coating of salt from her tongue. It’s their 2nd date? (Does litigation qualify?) But he’s distracted, he’s always distracted, never here, always there and Karen’s too tired to chase cold leads. 

They argued. 

  1. Is Morality Black and White. Is it Yes or No. Good or Bad exclusively. She’d said no, he’d said yes. It leads to a conflict of more than just interest, a collision of oppositely polarized hearts.
  2. Did Frank do what he did for a reason? Did it recuse the crime? Is it okay to kill if you are justified? 



As far as Karen can see, Matt’s too far entrenched in his own high and mighty Catholic schoolboy shtick while  _ she  _ knows what it feels like to lose someone you love and to feel hatred at the world because of it.

She  _ didn’t  _ know that Matt had the chance to kill the man who killed his father. She  _ didn’t  _ know that he’d met Frank under wildly different circumstances and preached his holier than thou crap at him before.

Karen’s tired of lies; and yeah, the methodology of  _ the big bad punisher  _ might not be the cleanest, might have an ugly shadow (he casts one, even in the dark of Hell’s Kitchen) but she knows that means there’s either a light behind him, or one leading him home because he’s not mindless, not a murderer. Not some psycho who guns down innocents there’s motive, there are hurt and heartache behind every bullet.

_ One batch. _

She’d been running towards something all this time; maybe the idea that some people deserve the crap hands they’re dealt, maybe that she’s not clean, that the blood on her hands might have washed away over time, but it’s no less there.

It’s not for her to say.

That was the night Karen Page held on with two hands and never let go. But it’s not to Matthew Murdock. 

It was to Frank. It’ll always be Frank. And maybe it had always been.

_ Unnerving, the way he can look into a person’s soul. _

He’d seen hers -- you were safe -- and Frank thought Karen was afraid  _ of  _ him when she’d only ever been afraid  _ for  _ him. But maybe he’d looked past all of that, looked deeper and deeper until there wasn’t a chance of him pulling back without leaving a part of himself buried like shrapnel in her heart. 

Karen’s journey for the truth is rooted in just that; she’d seen more to him, too. Not the Punisher, not a rogue soldier sob story but a  _ good  _ man who’d been pushed and pushed until he couldn’t be a good man anymore. It had broken her heart, sitting at her desk in the lobby of Nelson and Murdock, flipping through the photographs and statements that documented a  _ tragedy _ , not the cautionary tale painted by each and every media outlet from there to Delaware.

The fact that there  _ was  _ something beneath the scarred exterior, the bruises, and the blood; there’s a beating heart--- and the man who wields it? Deserved as much justice as anyone else. 

When she’d signed on to speak with Frank alone, when she’d told Matt (I’m not afraid of him) in that said:  _ he won’t hurt me _ . How could she have known? She wasn’t even aware, at the time, that Frank hadn’t been trying to shoot her in the hospital. Blind faith is hardly alive and well in the industry of prosecution and defense, but she’d armored herself with it all the same.

And you know what? She’d been right.

About everything.

_ Two batch. _

The second time Karen felt it was the stinging wind off the Hudson, and no matter how tightly she held her coat she couldn’t stave off the bitter chill. Winter was mocking her with pink skin, and eyes filled with tears. 

Yeah, that’s why she’s crying, and no reason else.

Frank’s there, _ in all of his great, refuted loneliness _ , and Karen’s left with the promise that what, he’s not lonely? Not at all? She doesn't buy it. She’s seen into his heart, his past, the rubble and ruin of it, and she knows all that he’s lost and the high price he keeps paying trying to find peace when he’s all war.

Do it for Maria. 

Do it for Lisa. 

Do it for Frank Jr.

One shot, one kill; had he done that, for them too? 

He blamed himself for their deaths; Karen knew that mourning and grief look an awful lot like guilt but this is different, this was misery tattooing the bloody stump of his heart against his ribs with every punch thrown, every bullet that left his clip, and with every life he took. He’d carved out enough of himself to keep on going, but what was lost in the transition from the monster, to a man?

_ I want there to be an after, for you. _

After what? After the media had crucified him after he’d cut through more men than the plague? There’s no after, Karen realized, and it pierced her gut, made her choke on the sorrow that bleeds off of him, viscous and thick until both of them could drown in it.

What does Frank do when there’s no one left to kill? No responsible party left alive in the end and Karen saw it, that twitch in his eyes when the cold she felt was concrete at her back and the only thing she heard was a dull, distant ringing. 

_ Penny and dime. _

This? This was the third time.

Living in Hell’s Kitchen had numbed Karen to guns in her face, to the violence and hatred of strangers on the street. But this fear, the one of being caged by a bomb while staring in the eyes of a man who’d die in defense of her -- there’d never been anything more bone-deep terrifying than that.

Matt asked her once if she believed in God, and Karen shrugged it off; because she knew in her heart that he’d use it to either condone his actions (as the man who broke her heart? Or as the devil of hell’s kitchen, she didn’t care) or condemn Frank’s. The irony in him spewing righteous doctrine about The Punisher during the day and playing his antithesis at night. She’d been dumbstruck, and furious. 

And then she’d left. 

She wouldn’t look back because the past is dead and buried. There’s a part of her that doesn’t think she’s allowed to mourn for what she’d lost, not while men like Frank Castle have a history stained so thoroughly, and so deeply, red. 

Now she’s that little girl with gingersnap crumbs on her skirt, locked in a closet and pleading:  _ take me far, far away from here _ , and she’s looking at Frank like he’s her ticket out. 

He’d come for her, he’d promised and Frank was nothing if not a man of his word.

She never thought she’d be talked through disarming a bomb, that she and Frank would get to the point where they can communicate nonverbally, through gestures, looks, and that she’d know just what he meant.

Any doubt, any waver in her faith in him, and they’d both be dead.

They lived, fraught with worry and superficial wounds. 

Frank had touched her,  _ you okay? _ And despite the tension that flanked them, despite the pain that shot up her thigh and despite the horrors they still faced, Karen had looked him in the eyes and said:  _ yeah _ . 

*

The bureau is teeming with activity around her, loud, panicked agents scrambling to make sense of the absolute shit show at the Bulletin. But Karen can’t hear them, not really, not over the funeral march of cell phone’s ringing, dimmed by the bloodstained evidence bags zipped tight over each and every one.

_ You okay?  _

_ Please tell me you’re safe. _

_ Did you make it to your train on time? _

_ Holy shit I just saw the news -- call me. _

Dozens of missed calls, even Foggy has to break away from his attempts at keeping Karen company to answer Marci. 

It didn’t matter, not really, not when she's so used to being alone she’s learned to live in it. Hide in it. She can’t thrive like Frank might but she’s breathing, she gets out of bed and she moves through the thick of it no matter how hard it might be. 

Nadeem has to leave her too -- his wife, Karen assumes, by the look of worry that washes over his face.

So Karen is left to stare at this tableau of heartbreak and grief like it doesn’t mirror her own because she doesn’t get to be sad yet. Not with the blame pinned to her back like a bullseye for her self-doubt. 

Every single person at the Bulletin was loved, they had lives ten times as enriched and fulfilled as hers and yet she’s the only one untouched. For once the blood on her sleeve isn’t hers and she keeps pulling at the fabric like it might erase it. Might undo what’s been done. 

Might distract her from the fact that her phone is in her pocket and hasn’t rung once. 

Whoever this … imposter Daredevil is, he’s got it out for Karen -- he had to have known she was taping Jasper’s confession, why else would he have very  _ clearly  _ implied his familiarity with her if no one else was conscious or alive to hear it? It was deliberate and she’s not going to stop until she figures out why. 

Karen’s not a vigilante, she doesn’t have extraordinary senses, pin-point accuracy, super strength or a law degree but she knows this shit stinks for more than just the obvious reasons. The FBI are the only other group that knew about their meeting at the Bulletin, either Fisk has an agent or two in his pocket, or he’s got their offices bugged. 

Because she knows without a  _ doubt  _ that this is the work of the Kingpin.

She’s already running through a list of possible sources, people to talk to, stones to turn over -- it’s how she operates best. When she’s got a cause to focus on and escape the world that continues to hurt her, continues to hollow her out. One day when the dust settles and the din of gunfire stops ringing in her ears, there’s going to be nothing left. 

Karen isn’t so self-serving to ignore the masses caught in the crossfire yet again. She’d told Foggy once that she has to be bringing this shit her way and just right then that guilt sits heavy, the flash of red and blue lights where it kicks off drifts of snow, far away her father screams and then it fades out into static. Another voice comes into focus, slowly at first and then all at once.

“Karen?” Foggy’s brows crease, he rests a hand on her shoulder and she has to navigate the intense thread of loneliness that catches on the hook of his unyielding compassion. 

She sniffs, rubs the sleeve not caked in blood under her nose, and nods. Just a little, but she gets it. He’s going to say:  _ go home, get some rest _ . And she’ll tell him that it’s a good idea, she might even thank him and at best her grimace looks enough like a smile that it’ll placate his kind-hearted nature. 

It isn’t that she takes it for granted - Karen knows she doesn’t deserve his kindness, especially not after she’d almost gotten them all killed in her endless pursuit of honesty. Of truth. 

How is it that doing the right thing always ends wrong? Unearthing injustice is by definition,  _ just  _ \-- so why do people around her truth, her honesty, always get the shit end of the stick? Why do they get hurt?

Why do they die?

It’s not a matter of fairness, Karen learned a long time ago that there isn’t any. Nothing real or tangible in the sense that motivates Matt, maybe. As far as she can see, they earn it. They find it and they build it into a wall until nothing else gets past it. Until it’s absolute. 

Foggy insists she takes a cab - she’s in no shape to drive (which is true), he even offers to pay for it and god, Karen just wants to be away from people waiting for her to break. As if she’d ever stopped breaking. 

As if she’d ever been whole.

For a moment, she had been, two hands on him; the elevator’s alarm so far away they could have been anyplace else. Frank was hurting, bleeding, half-dead but the last words out of his mouth had been, selfless, tailored as if she were the one exsanguinating and riddled with shrapnel,  _ take care _ .

She sort of hates that she can’t. Like she’d lied in the parting nod his way, or how immediately thereafter she’d thrown herself into work so heavily she often forgot to eat, or drink anything that wasn’t soaked in caffeine.

Burning the candle at both ends started to show by the third week, but at least she felt the heat of the fire. At least it was something other than the bleak expanse of nothing that’d plagued her in the moments between escape. 

“No, Fog I’m -- I’m fine, really. I just want to go home, I can pay my way there.” She smiles weakly at him and maybe if he hadn’t also just almost died, he’d have seen through the very thin veil of her composure. 

Her fingers shake but she manages to flag down a cab and she lets out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding the moment she settles into the heated interior. New York is always cold this time of year, but this felt deliberate. 

She tries to warm her hands by sitting on them (it also keeps her from staring and picking at the drying flecks of blood), but all that earns her is a hard stare from the very tired driver who is still waiting for her to tell them where they’re going.

“Um-- Metro General please?” She pulls her wallet from her back pocket and thumbs through the crumpled bills. It’s only three miles out, really, she could walk, but Karen’s also certain that Foggy would watch and wait until she got into a car so she couldn’t justify it if he knew where she is headed.

The drive is silent. Mercifully, said  _ very tired driver _ doesn’t try to fill it with small talk. Doesn’t chatter away about his day. He just nods and drives. And keeps the heat high enough that her fingers start to thaw out by the time he pulls up into the drop-off lane.

“Thank you.” Another failed attempt to smile, but he’s not looking when he takes her money and waves her away, already off to pick up his next fare. Karen hesitates in the lobby; just as busy as ever - there’s no short supply of bodily harm accruing daily in Hell’s Kitchen, and it’s … it’s hard for her to ask for the right to see him. 

  
  
“I’m looking for Mitchell Ellison?” Karen chews on her lip while the nurse types his name into her computer -- it’s slow, either because she’s staring at the clock like every second lost is a second off of Ellison’s life (he’s fine, he’d assured her on the phone but nothing feels fine when the happiest place in her life now felt like a tomb), or it’s the outdated and ancient hardware the hospital is working with. 

Politicians come and they go but they never fail to continually underfund medicine at every turn. Maybe she’ll write a gutting expose in silent thanks for keeping her family alive.

And make no mistake, Ellison might be her ballbusting boss but he’s more of a father to her than her own ever was. Kinder, more understanding. He’s a good man and he did not deserve an ounce of the shit his hiring Karen has rained down on him. 

“He’s on the third floor, recovery room 15 -- please sign in, get a visitor’s pass from the desk over there,” she points with the clipboard before handing it to Karen. “And turn over any firearms with the security clerk - you can have them back when you leave.” 

Her .308 is in pieces in evidence lock-up and even just hours without it has left her feeling vulnerable. Exposed. 

Little good it’d done her when she’d pointed it at the psychopath who murdered her coworkers, her  _ friends _ . But it still brought her comfort in knowing that she could pull the trigger. She could do it. 

The paperwork is minimal; name, date, the reason for her visit, etc. Karen’s unparalleled in her ability to mow through bureaucratic bullshit so she dots her I’s crosses her T’s and within five minutes is taking the elevator up to the third floor. Her fingers shake, so she holds her purse tighter, but all that does is remind Karen of her silent phone and the empty place where her sense of security should be. 

Karen’s tough, though; and maybe that’s not what’s needed right now but it is what’s necessary if she’s going to get through this. If she’s going to look Ellison in the eye and apologize at length for the hell she brought to his doorstep. She even convinces herself that she’ll make it out of here and be okay; maybe she’d keep her word to Foggy. Go home, and sleep. 

That’s until the doors ding, open, and all Karen sees is a hallway full of grieving widows, mothers, daughters, sisters. Families, missing a piece. 

Every set of eyes are on her, or they feel that way; burning their hatred, resentment into her back and Karen doesn’t even blame them for it. Doesn’t fault an inch of their mile-long rage. 

It’s all her fault, and she  _ knows  _ that. But to say sorry felt like a lie - not because she doesn’t mean it, but because it cannot change a damn thing. 

Her eyes are on the room numbers, shame hot, stirring the bile in her gut and she’s just about to break down in tears when she finds him, slips into Ellison’s room and braces herself against the door to shut it.

“Rough day?” he’s spearing some green jello with a spork, and aside from the hospital robes and the IV in his arm, Ellison looks about the same as he does any other day. Absolutely unbothered by the hailstorm of bullshit raining down outside. 

Karen could almost laugh, exhaustion snowballing to the point of absurdity. Instead, she runs her fingers through her hair and focuses on controlling the uneasy beating of her heart. 

“Yeah,” her voice is raw despite the fact that she hadn’t managed to properly cry. To mourn. It’s stuck in the back of her throat and refuses to leave. “I uh, I’m so sorry, Ellison I know--”

He lifts up one finger and fixes her with a hard stare. 

The conversation devolves rapidly and before she knows it those tears she’s been searching for are streaming down her cheeks -- she defends Matt of all people, refuses to say how she knows the things she knows or even the specifications of that knowledge and... it’s too much. It’s the straw that breaks the camel's back and what’s worse in the midst of losing everything, Karen can’t find it in herself to see an alternate route.

_ This is it _ , she thinks _ , I can’t move on from here _ .

She does, though, walks through the wet-cold of dusk until she’s back at the  _ Bulletin _ , most of it’s taped off but she’s able to get through to the parking garage, gets in her car, and cries until there’s nothing left in her to let out. 

Empty, yeah, but it’s better this way. 

Autopilot kicks in until she fishes her phone out of her bag and stares at the screen. Blank. Not a single person checked up on her. Turns out isolationism doesn’t breed a very thick thread of concern -- but it’s deserved, it’s what she’s worked for with all those years of burning bridges and refusal to dish on Frank Castle, or Daredevil,  _ Matt _ . She’d gladly wear the scorn of her friends if it meant keeping them safe. Keeping them out of the way. 

She’s doing all she can to keep breathing, but even that is a chore.

Before Karen’s even fully aware of it, she’s unlocked her screen, pulled up the list of favorites (few, so few, and two of them died today) and presses ‘home’.  _ Breathe in, breathe out; _ it shakes but she manages without choking, only to have to cover her mouth when the ringing starts.

“Dad?”

“Jesus, Karen.” 

She wants to go home to Fagan corners, she wants … well, Karen doesn’t really know what she wants, or what she expects to come of this but he says no. And it’s final. A nail in the coffin of her indecision. He says it’s the timing. But that, Karen knows, is a lie.

She’s not welcome back. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 

Despite the fact that she hasn’t been home in over a decade, knowing that the door is closed to her makes everything else feel unbearably heavy. She sobs into the quiet of her car, snow is beginning to stick to her windshield when she pulls out but she slams on her breaks halfway through the lot when her phone rings.

It’s an unknown number, probably a freelancer burning through his contacts at the Bulletin to find someone alive. Or it’s a source. Or maybe the compounding interest on her student loan debt has warranted a collection call. Her fingers are stiff from the cold, from the half-life she’s left with, but they swipe to answer after a beat.

“Karen Page.” Her voice sounds distorted, foreign even in the silence of her car. 

There’s static on the other line, so she sighs, a half second from hanging up but then she hears a sniff, the rustle of a thick coat.

Her heart stops.

“Frank?”

“Yeah.” He’s out of breath, maybe. Or he’s outside for whatever reason, it’s too cold for his surveillance bullshit and she hadn’t put the roses on the sill in well over three months. So she’s not sure why he’s calling.

And then it hits her.

“You heard, then.” About the shooting. The death toll is up to five. Five families left broken in the wake of her self-proclaimed righteous act. Karen’s not usually the ‘wallow in guilt’ type but she’s admittedly without her defenses, caught on the edge of everything, unable to commit to falling to either side. 

Frank sniffs, she pictures how his nose wrinkles, how he squints a little and works his jaw over the silence. “Yeah, yeah I did.” 

Karen waits. He’s not the talkative sort on a good day - he’s careful with the words he chooses, always deliberate. He doesn’t tend to say shit out of rage, or if he does, it’s the god’s honest truth exposed by an upended state. 

“Frank?” Again. She wants to know what he has to say, but also,  _ also _ , maybe she’s still not sure it’s him. That this is real. It’d been so long and every lead she’d chased in pursuit of answers, a sign that he wasn’t dead, had gone cold.

The warmth behind her hummingbird heart is a welcome break from this tundra.

“I just--  _ Karen _ .” He’d stopped and started a dozen times before he’d gotten that much out. She doesn’t know it, but he had. Karen has to shut her eyes, afraid he won’t continue but he does, “I tried callin’ around. Didn’t think you’d answer - I was hopin’ you would but shit.  _ Shit,  _ I didn’t know if you… if you were one of them.”  _ The dead. _ “Didn’t know if you’d want me showing my mug around if you were okay or--- are you?” He catches himself, and Karen manages to keep her tears from bleeding ache into her reply.

“I’m fine, Frank.” He doesn’t need it, doesn’t need more of her crap piled on top of his. He’d only just gotten out from under the worst of it and Karen would be damned before she drowned him in more. She has to choke the words out because it’s a lie, it’s a lie and even if Frank was a stranger he’d read it as clear as day. He’s kind enough not to call her on her bullshit even if he’s just this side of annoyed.

Not with her, no. But it’s a fucking mess and Karen’s knee deep in denial and in no state to offer him answers. 

Karen feels like absolute shit, hanging on the silence; he’s honest. He never lies to her. And then he speaks.

“Take care, Karen.” And the line goes dead.

She changes it though, stores the number out of the half-hope that Frank would keep this burner long enough to be worth it. Her childhood phone number isn’t the one under ‘home’ anymore. It’s his.

But the dial tone fades back into focus and she’s reminded, once more, that she’s alone.

_ He’s had enough, _ it’s all she can assume. So Karen takes the next logical step in processing (re: avoiding) her feelings and drives to a liquor store on 11th. It’s family owned, the sweet older Italian lady sitting behind the counter, one hand on a reader’s digest and the other thumbing the trigger of the double barrel she kept underneath it. 

“Hey,” she smiles, and is met with a crooked, but warm, grin. She grabs a bottle of Jameson off the shelf-- Foggy had broken her habit of buying cheap, and it tasted a little bit like a past that didn’t leave her all alone.

She pays with a crumpled twenty, leaves the change in a jar marked: feed the starving children, as it turns you she’s still all heart.

The jury’s out on whether or not any part of it’s beating. 

She gets home, clutching the brown paper bag to her chest like a lifeline, and almost walks straight into his chest. 

Into Frank.

“What the fuck--” He’s scowling like  _ she’d  _ inconvenienced  _ him _ . “Mind telling me why you’re in my living room?” 

Stepping around him, Karen fetches a glass from the kitchen, halts, changes her mind, and grabs two. She pours them each a finger, but Frank’s huffing and puffing before he whirls around on her, clearly working on his words like he’s gnawing through them.

“The hell have you been Karen? It only takes fifteen to get to your place from the garage and it’s almost been an hour---” He’s pacing, just a little, and eyes the liquor with the halls of his mind’s eyes well and thoroughly haunted. 

Karen just.  _ Stares _ . Mostly because he’s here, and he’s ..  _ alive _ . There isn’t blood trailing off of him, no beard, maybe 5 o’clock shadow and his hair is a little bit longer on top. But it’s Frank. Frank without exhaustion bruised under his eyes and Karen’s caught between collapsing in relief and feeling put on display by his unruly posture, the way he can’t settle on standing or looking or breathing. His fingers flutter idly at his side.

She only thinly represses the urge to reach out and grab them. She thumbs a line of condensation from her glass, downs it all in one go, and laughs dryly. Looking down at her floor. Avoidant. 

“I stopped at the store,” a shrug. She can’t mask that knee-jerk compulsion to react defensively. Karen knows Frank won't judge her, but she’s got shame enough for the both of them and she hides it with bared teeth.

“Jesus, Karen.” Frank finally processes that she’s home, and in one piece. He grabs the whiskey, looks between it, and her, and sets it back down, shaking his head a little bit before sinking into the couch. He’s almost comically big for it. It’s narrow, cheap, and he takes up all the air in the room, all the space (all the empty) without even trying.

Karen’s breathing evenly for the first time in weeks.

“You’re not okay.” A statement of fact, Frank’s not asking. He scrubs his palm over his scalp, eyes wide, unseeing and flinted in a fear he won’t acknowledge but they both know is there. Karen kneels at his feet instead of sitting beside him.

She shakes her head too, honest. Neither of them speaks for a long while until her neighbor’s dog barks and they  _ both  _ jump just a little bit. It startles a laugh out of him, and he curls his shoulders inwards so his forehead dusts across her own. 

They fall into this almost intimacy. Almost touching. Almost kissing. Almost. Almost. 

But never quite.

They sit in this heavy silence for a while, eyes shut. Karen’s comforted by the heavy beat of his heart, the even breathing of a soldier at rest. She kisses his cheek, a phantom of the night out by the Hudson. There aren’t tears in her eyes this time, but it feels just as significant that they have this. Have  _ something  _ in place of the weeks, the months of loneliness. 

“It wasn’t him -- Daredevil.” Karen finally breaks the silence, sits up and across from him on the threadbare loveseat, she picks at the pilled fabric instead of looking up at Frank. Well, until he barks out some real laughter, and she lifts her chin, her brows in shock. 

“Yeah, Red’s all about second chances. He doesn’t kill, I get that. Know that. Figured it was some copycat but I uh, asked David to do some digging,” Karen figures Liberman’s one of the people he’d contacted when he was ‘asking around’, she nods so that Frank can continue, even if her heart’s racing a bit. “You had -- what was it, Jasper Evans, about to flip on Fisk? Somethin’ like that? Staged a stabbing so he could get out?” 

Karen balks at this, “how did you--” She turns to eye her laptop where it sits on the coffee table. Traitor. “Tell David if he wants information he can wait until Sunday morning and read it in the paper like everyone else.” Dryly. She’s not actually bothered by the invasion of privacy -- moreover that she knew better than to store sensitive information on her personal computer and she’d done it anyway. 

“Yeah. Fisk’s … got the FBI playing extreme home makeover. So long as he keeps feeding them good intel,” Karen shrugs again, lets the threat of Fisk having federal assistance speak for itself. The entire situation stinks of corruption but Karen’s still got a lot of digging left to do. A lot of people who she needs to ask about the truth. 

With the FBI suspicious of her connection to Daredevil, and their sniffing around for James Wesley … she can’t run the risk of public defamation. Not yet. 

“Alright so what-- you were gonna use the power of your  _ justice system _ to bring Fisk back in? That it?” he clicks his tongue, not to mock, necessarily, but it’s clear to a blind man how little faith Frank has left in the law. 

Karen rubs her lips together, her fingers stir in her lap. “I mean -- ideally? I doubt the FBI is knowingly complicit in Fisk’s schemes but the moment I find someone who can give them the proof they need -- he dies? Publicly? Along with -- a half-dozen other reporters and I’m --” Voice breaking; she can’t cry, not anymore, but her eyes burn with the want for it all the same. “I’m the only one that’s left untouched? He even… he knew me. Knew my  _ name _ . Implied that we’d met before.” Her teeth grit over the last few words because she can’t explain how she knows. But Frank’s. .. met the  _ real  _ Daredevil, so maybe he’d get it, too. 

Even now, when she doesn’t owe him a god damned thing, Karen keeps Matt’s secret.

“I think Fisk has a man on the inside. Possibly more but I can’t be sure -- there’s an agent, Ray Nadeem -- he wants the truth as much as I do but he’s in the trenches Frank, he has no idea he’s played right into Wilson  _ fucking  _ Fisk’s hands.” 

To his credit, Frank has remained quiet, observant.  _ Visibly  _ calm. 

Underneath that’s a hailstorm but hey, the din of mortar fire isn’t so bad just then and he bows his head, hands tightening into fists. Knuckles stretched white.

“Karen ---  _ fuck _ . This isn’t -- you know --” He huffs out, nostrils flaring and he’s twitching, moving but staying in place and she wants to touch him again. Wants to gentle this beast of war, let him finally come home.

It’s not her right, not her place. But her heart doesn’t know any better and as much as she’d like to blame it on the liquor, her tolerance is too high for the one drink to make a damn bit of difference. 

There’s still red on her sleeve, she stares at it too long. A tilt-shift blur where the hardwood under her feet is carpet, momentarily, and there’s a blood stain growing, waxing and waning. Cold water, bleach, nothing got it clean but this is a new house, a new place. No bullet holes or grief hanging heavy in the doorway.

“Karen.” Frank tries, he leans into it and Karen knows to listen, that he’s trying. This is his best. “You don’t -- you don’t go after men like this. Not like that you-you get someone to put a bullet between their eyes and you call it a day.” He shakes his head slowly, eyes unfocused where he stares over her shoulder, looking but not seeing. It makes her heartache.

Karen presses her lips together tightly and stands up, unceremoniously announcing, “I’m going to go take a shower. I haven’t in --” She looks at her phone, but it’s dead, and it wouldn’t exactly have an answer emblazoned on the screen if it wasn’t. “I don’t know. Days? I haven’t slept or eaten and I -- you can stay.” A part of her knows he won’t, but the rest of her is silently begging him to. 

She’d give up her bed, take the stiff futon. Take the floor. Hell, she’d sleep in the bathtub at this rate because she’s deeply and thoroughly exhausted. 

“Just. At least until I’m done I --” _have so much to tell you. So many questions to ask._

“Stay.” 

They’re back in a hospital, he’s in the bed. Twenty questions with a killer, but now he’s her… friend? It feels less and more and Karen’s wrangling with that before adding -- “Please.” Her voice has none of the strength of his and this isn’t hung on a wing and prayer. This is the after and it doesn’t look anything like what she’d hoped.

But she hopes still.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regret, and her bedfellow, coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for canon compliance, I had a whole 'nother direction to go with this. The next chapter is a long one, I hope the sweet stuff in the middle makes up for how long it took me to get this out here!

Frank does stay. 

She’d half expected a note, maybe, when she got out of the shower, dressed in a ratty Georgetown t-shirt and sweats, an apology that always,  _ always  _ blames Frank for what he can’t do yet. Can’t stay in one place. Can’t stand the quiet. Can’t put her at risk, again. Karen doesn’t mask her surprise when she sees him, but the moment stretched on too far for her to comment on it or brush it away.

They don’t talk about it anymore. They don’t really talk at  _ all _ . It’s not that ordering Chinese takeout isn’t stimulating conversation but Karen really just … she  _ always  _ felt like she had so much to say and never enough time to say it.

Each of their collisions has come at the worst possible time, without a moment to breathe or process any of what’s happened. And now,  _ finally  _ presented with the chance to let it all out in the open, neither of them can. Or maybe they could, and she’s just tired, the quiet is comforting and Frank knows better than to press on a wound that’s barely closed.

This isn’t gunfire, it isn’t the thick wet drip of blood on an elevator floor or the roar of wind off the Hudson. 

It’s the first time they’ve had real, genuine quiet. 

For someone who talks for a living, for a girl with all the words, Karen’s surprised by how much she enjoys it. 

Karen orders vegetable lo mein, and Frank, some ungodly combination of chicken and beef that’s drenched in, what she can only  _ assume  _ to be motor oil. It’s thick, viscous, brown, and the chopsticks stick to the cardboard every time he dives in for another bite.

_ Hey _ , she doesn’t judge. 

Whatever fuels The  _ Punisher  _ of all people must fucking work because the two times she’s been around Frank when he’s at the tail end of a long week (day, hour,  _ life _ ), he keeps on moving forward. He doesn’t drop till he  _ drops _ . It’s as admirable as it is concerning. But she keeps her words of wisdom to herself, and none too subtly nudges a glass of water his way every now and again.

It’s not pretty, but it’s peace. 

Eating in silence usually left Karen feeling awkward, like she’d never learned the parts of being a person that included small talk. But with Frank it’s … it’s just the way things are. If they aren’t discussing a thread she’d pulled, or a lead he’d hunted, there’s nothing they can freely discuss.

Or, there is, but they don’t.

She’s not sure what’s worse when she finishes her food. The quiet, or how loud the things they cannot say scream behind her eyes - maybe that’s why she avoids looking into his too directly. Escapism, always the companionable bedfellow to denial, to a refusal to pick at wounds that she has no right to watch bleed.

She starts to collect the empty take-out boxes, packets of soy sauce discarded on the coffee table - it’s familiar, for Karen, to do something other than focus on what she’s feeling. It’s not the time, not the place, and she .. she can’t, so she doesn’t, but her heart is at war with her brain and the only way to keep it quiet is to shift her focus someplace else.

Throwing away their food, she uses this opportunity to pour herself another drink. She finishes it in the kitchen, then another, and returns to the living room with her glass half full and a set to her shoulders that speaks to a tension she’s not about to name.

Or she can, but she won’t.

The tension that has absolutely  _ nothing  _ to do with Frank, rested, cleanly shaven, half folded over yesterday’s paper with a look of satisfaction she’s never seen him wear. It’s the food, she knows, the sodium coma will set in shortly but when he stretches his thick limbs out, from toe to fingertip, and sprawls over her couch. Karen feels that knot between her shoulders tighten, and she has to look at the water-stained ceiling to compose herself. 

“Do you need any um, blankets or anything?” She's not used to having guests. It shows.

Frank chuckles a little bit, it’s low, an uncertain sound as if he’d forgotten how - Karen’s not sure she’d ever heard it without glass in his throat, without it bruised beyond recognition or trailing self-deprecation that needed a way out. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, he sighs through his nose, like he could scent her discomfort, some warborn beast ill at odds with the calm domesticity of her apartment. “ ‘m fine Karen, thanks uh, for the grub. Appreciate it.” 

Karen’s always just about to speak, to confide, to say any one of the innumerable things they never get around to. But this is the same as always, no different, so Karen nods, muttering a half-hearted, “Night, Frank.” The click of her turning off the lights punctuates it, she turns on her socked feet to hide away in her room. With Frank sleeping ten feet away, her small apartment feels smaller still, and Karen knows there’s no chance of her catching any z’s. 

It takes a couple of hours before the exhaustion sets in; so Karen chips away, editing an article about water runoff contamination into the Hudson, when she falls asleep on her keyboard.

She dreams:

_ She’s leaving the office a little early – Karen does that now, allows herself stolen moments to breathe. Always caught on the lip of a breaking story or this close to empirical evidence of a client’s innocence. She’s happy – or she’s distracted, but sometimes they look the same. _

_ Today though. Today it looks like a hand to her mouth in surprise while the other shakes, so she shoves it deep into the pocket of her coat and looks at the sky to blink back her tears. _

_ She’s not going to cry for him anymore. _

_ “Hey,” Frank’s voice is warm, rough in that way that’s exclusively his and however angry she wants to be, the only thing that hits her is a wave of relief. He’s leaning against the hood of her car, Karen crosses her arm and regards him coolly, passively; like she isn’t about to catch him in a crushing hug. _

_ Instead, Karen sniffs, toes a crack in the cement, and actively avoids his gaze (won’t be able to leave it, if she gets caught), “What’s that?” She lifts her chin to vaguely gesture at the brown paper bag at his side. Frank smiles and Christ, she’ll really never get tired of seeing the soldier at ease. _

_ “I uh,” he ducks his head, scrubs at the back of his neck with blunt nails and seems to be steeling himself before opening the bag. Another potted rose, but this one is a gradient of yellow, tipped in red. She’s not a florist and doesn’t possess any amount of knowledge on what that means, but the white ones (that she’d miraculously managed to keep alive) made her heart sink. _

_ These, make it race. _

_ “More flowers, huh?” She steps off the curb, her eyes cut to where Frank’s fingers twitch, almost as if he meant to reach out to her but thought better of it. Good, it’s easier this way, when they don’t touch. It makes his goodbyes feel less like he’s taking the parts of her she’s buried in his heart with him when he left.  _

_ And he does, he always left. Karen stopped blaming him for that a long time ago. _

_ “Yeah I uh, well – Pete,” he corrects himself, almost looking bashful when his eyes go round and wide, locked onto hers. This was a mistake. “I got some time, you know? Yeah, I’m not at the top of anyone’s shit list these days, thought I’d show my gratitude the right way.” Karen doesn’t know what he means by that, but the tight white line she’d melded her lips into, loosens, and the pink on her cheeks rushes down her neck when she finally smiles his way.  _

_ “How noble,” Karen deadpans, and it just earns her one of his broken-glass chuckles. She has to bite her lip to keep composure. _

_ “Yeah a real white knight, huh?” It’s winter, but the sun’s broken through the clouds enough that it’s glinting off the windows around them, the half-melted snow like prisms and it’s caught on the edges of his eyes. Unnerving, the way he can look into a person’s soul. She feels pierced by it. _

_ Karen swallows visibly, “So how do you plan on showing me this gratitude of yours?” She arches a brow in an attempt to once more regain her footing. _

_ Hint: it isn’t working because Frank’s standing now, a foot away, maybe inches. And she can feel the warmth of his broad frame. _

_ Frank kisses her forehead, it startles her but she catches herself with two hands to his chest, fingers lightly pressed into the fabric of his thick coat. She shudders, and it rattles around in her mouth so that the next breath she’s capable of taking sounds like a sigh.  _

_ “ ‘m not … good at this shit, yeah?” He shuffles his feet against the road-slush ice, half salt, and half calcified exhaust, “but I wanna.. I wanna try okay? Yeah, I … you believed me.” Frank’s voice is that low, worn whisper that makes every word brand itself in her heart. Karen nods quickly, hoping that it disguises the fact that she can’t quite talk. “You believed me, you helped. You always … you’re good and maybe I don’t deserve that but I think .. I think you at least deserve my thanks an’ maybe that’s bullshit too. Maybe I just wanna be selfish even if… even if I haven’t earned that right.” _

_ Karen just throws her arms around him, on the lip of the road where it meets the sidewalk with hundreds of city goers passing them by. Her car left forgotten, the roses a tableau in her tear mottled periphery. She holds him, lofted around his neck with her face pressed just over his heart - Karen can hear the heavy, even beat of it while her own tries desperately to break through her chest.  _

_ “You can start with buying me a beer.” Her voice shakes, but she’s smiling when she finally withdraws and Frank’s smiling too, eyes glimmering when he gives her a shy nod in return.  _

_ “Okay but none of that imported crap, I always buy American,” as he rounds her car to open the driver’s side door for her, Karen grabs the roses, and gestures for Frank to take the passenger’s seat. It feels odd, after so many endings. So many goodbyes. So many be carefuls.  _

_ She almost forgot what a beginning felt like.  _

Karen gasps when she wakes up, a hand to her throat, tears half-dry, itchy trails of salt down her cheeks and pooled on the pillow folded over behind her. Not a beginning, that sinking feeling in her stomach that accompanies disappointment. Some malformed grief that tastes like the warmth of holding onto Frank. Of being held. It’s a lonely girl’s work of fiction and she hates that she wanted it with a semi-conscious desperation. 

She stumbles out of bed, the cold that greets her when she opens her bedroom door is all she needs to know. Frank’s gone, she wonders if he’d stayed the night. Touches the blankets she’d left out on the couch. They’re still warm.

She can’t decide if it’s better or worse that way. That she’d feel comfort if they weren’t still shaped like he was sleeping underneath them.

Karen finds her way through unshed tears (are they from the sleep that gave her no relief? Or are they the continued pain of loving in a life that had no room for love?) to the bathroom. She gets through washing her face, brushing her teeth. But when she closes the medicine cabinet and stares into the mirror, Karen’s face to face with resignation.

The way it crawls down her throat, makes her stomach go tight. 

So breakfast is out of the question, but maybe there are enough coffee grounds to get her to the Bulletin - if she’s late because she stopped for an espresso one more time, Ellison was going to suggest she go cold turkey.

The joke hadn’t landed then, and face to face with her current reality, Karen’s not exactly smiling. She’s glad that the mirror fogs up a moment later, turning away while toweling the wet ends of her hair.

Getting dressed is a blur, it’s rote, routine, muscle memory more than she’s actively engaged in what she’s doing. Jeans today, and her favorite blue floral top half tucked into the waistband. Boots, maybe, but shoes are by the door, waiting.

Heading back into the living room with her head half-buried in a morgue report she might’ve flirted off an M.E, she walks into Frank. Karen isn’t proud with the way she yells out; echoes of uninvited guests from before. A dream with Fisk’s hand around her throat or Matt, asking for her help. 

_ Help _ , she laughed in his face, told him to pay her rent. Now he’s ‘home’, or he isn’t, and Karen can’t spend another moment concerned about Matthew Murdock. Not while he’s so dedicated to this broken crusade. He knew better than to show up.

It’s Frank, with two styrofoam cups of coffee, looking at her like she’s got a screw loose. 

“Hey,  _ hey _ ,” he sets them down on the counter, catches Karen by her shoulders and his eyes rove over her face, words of concern written in every beat of silence. She just presses her lips together, nods, mumbles:

“I’m okay.”

Sometimes she wonders if this is what’s left. Frank had asked her that, once,  _ what if this is just who I am now? _ What if grief has stripped away everything that made her, her. If lies plastered up the holes called trust in her heart and maybe after all is said and done. This is what she gets to be, a vessel of regret, but mostly just pain. 

Frank looks unconvinced, but he doesn’t press. Doesn’t tread where she doesn’t let him in. He does offer her the coffee, brows lifted in that plaintive, sweet way of his. She’d described them as ‘puppy dog’ once, and he’d pulled a face. 

_ The big bad punisher, sweet? _ It’d make a hell of an eye-catching title, but no one would believe what they had not seen, and so far he’s only shown this side of him.  _ Softly _ , to her. 

Karen wraps her hands around the cup, shivers, as the shocks of warmth work their way up her arms, and by the time it reaches her heart - she’s pure flame. Kindness, _Frank’s_ kindness in particular, seems to do that to her every time.

Does he ever get tired of living on the head of a match? Not any more than she gets tired of being the kerosene.

“Thanks,” she lifts her coffee as if he needed to see what it is she’s thanking him for. Frank cracks a half smile, rubbing at the stubble that shadows his jaw. 

“Figured I owed you for dinner, you know.” That’s how they measure intimacy; with give and take. The distribution of information, and the flowers caught in a blustery morning’s grey illumination.

Karen snorts, a brow lifted, “don’t thank me yet - I’m not liable if you get salmonella, you know.” She falls back into levity like a security net, evasive but sweet. It doesn’t look like escapism unless you look too closely.

Frank does, his hip against the kitchen counter while he sips at his coffee -- black, scrawled in sharpie along the side of the cup, the word is tucked underneath his broad hand but legible enough. His nose wrinkles, face pulling like he really, really didn’t enjoy the taste, “Where you headed?” 

Karen’s going to say work, it’s just another day.

But then she remembers. And it catches on the back of her teeth. The ache. Her work’s a crime scene, rendered all to hell and shit, everyone she knew was half dead already. 

It didn’t matter either way, she’s technically unemployed.

Ellison’s words stick like tar and she chokes on them, masks it as a cough. A shrug. Karen buries her focus in the too-hot coffee, tongue burned but at least she doesn’t have to confess that she’d forgotten. Running on automatic after so long was finally going to catch up with her. She thinks of her gun in her purse. Thinks of Kevin, Ben. Shit, even Wesley’s a tally mark on her growing body count. 

She recovers gracelessly, chewing her lip and thumbing the plastic edge of her coffee’s lid.“Um -- Foggy has an event today. He’s going to light a fire under Tower’s ass about this whole Fisk, federal detention thing, use it as his platform. He’s running for District Attorney. I’m his guest,” the last bit is airy, Karen even manages a tight lipped smile. Union reps and city council bureaucrats? Any journalist would be  _ jumping  _ at the opportunity for an inside scoop. But Karen’s not a journalist, and she has no one to tell this story to. 

She catches the guarded look in his eyes before he hides it, Frank just grunts. 

“Why?” Karen’s aware she sounds demanding, doesn’t care that it’s a sharp toothed way of saying; you have no right to ask. But Frank gives a shrug and that’s about all the ambiguity Karen can handle, so she sets her jaw, “If I ask what you’re doing today, would you tell me?”  _ You’re honest _ , but he’d never had to lie to keep her safe before. Everything today is a vignette of dirty, no one dipped their toe in this city and walked away clean. 

Frank sighs, “Look Kar I--” There are pauses when he speaks. The dialect of a soldier who had too much quiet left inside, “I -- I got my shit too still, yeah? You know … You know it wasn’t just gonna go away ‘cuz me an’ homeland are good. I took a risk coming here.” But by the way he phrases it, all Karen hears is: _ put you, at risk _ .

“Then why did you come?” Challenging; she wants to make him say. Back Frank Castle into a corner until his only way out was honesty. 

She can see the vein in his jaw jump as he chews on his words, his heavy brows draw in and the flint of disbelief in his eyes makes guilt well up in her gut, “because I can’t --- for a moment. Between the news at the Bulletin, and hearing your phone ring I just--” He stops, nostrils flaring as he draws in a breath to steel himself. “For a moment, I thought you were gone and I can’t -- I can’t…” 

It’s shame.  _ I couldn’t protect them. It was my job to keep them safe. _

Karen swallows down the hot, stinging taste of bile, “I’m .. i’m okay Frank, see?” She waves a hand down her body, the other hovers indecisively in the air between them. “I’m here, all in one piece.” Her voice breaks though, because is she? Is there any part of her that isn’t irreconcilably broken? 

He looks at her with fire in his eyes, it might just be enough to weld her back together, however temporarily.

“I can’t lose you.” It left him a heavy handed rush. Frank’s said those exact words to her before, but somehow, this time, it hits her square in the chest. Knocks the wind out of her and has her limbs feeling some strange combination of hot, and cold. 

Karen’s blinking tears from her eyes, stares at the ceiling so gravity might keep them from rolling down her cheeks. 

“You say this, Frank,” her voice is thick, wet, crackling over every word as she fights through  _ laughing _ , fights through broken sobs. “You say this but how many times have I had to go to sleep knowing you were dead? Not -- not afraid of it, but  _ actively  _ thinking you were gone.” It’s a childish bed to lie in, the stance of  _ it’s not fair _ \- knowing how little bearing it has on the real world. That they’ve never been able to measure their lives in fairness. Her heart demanded it all the same.

It’s not to heap coals over his head, but she’s trying, trying to talk about. To unstick this shitty gear they’re stuck in on a slippery embankment. 

Frank just wraps her up in his arms, her cheek to his chest, tears turning the front of his green shirt, black. The steady beating of his heart makes it easier to forgive him when he apologizes.

“ ‘m sorry.” 

She breathes him in, lungs inflated on the frostbitten air that’s rushing through this crack in the ice. Their defenses are thawing, and there’s no way of knowing what sort of horrors lie beneath. A thrill in the unknown but Karen’s terrified. 

He left after they finish drinking. Taking their time like they know the closer and closer they get to the bottom of the cup, the more it tastes like goodbye. Bitter. Inevitable. 

***

_ Maybe I’m just drawing this stuff my way. Maybe I deserve it.  _ Maybe, maybe, maybe..

And yet.

The only way Fisk goes back in is a breach of his contract, and, thanks to Foggy, Karen knew how to bait him into it. It’s not a church confessional, she’ll draw those sins out -- broadcast them to the world. Karen’s already bluffing about being a member of the press, it’ll be a breeze from there to flank him with scare tactics. It’s journalistic bullying, but if anyone deserved it, it’s Wilson Fisk.

And maybe, maybe, maybe, doing her part in bringing him down. In putting him back in his cage, could act as reconciliation, if god still watched her, still waited for her to do the right thing. To do something good. 

She doesn’t have her gun, it’s still in evidence lockup, but Karen wouldn’t have run the risk of bringing it with her either way. 

It’s still a satisfying image to entertain, a bullet between his eyes. Blood on that white suit of his. 

Her phone rings in her purse ‘home’ lights up across the screen but she silences it, shuts it off reflexively. Waiting for word that she’d gotten the go-ahead for a one on one with Fisk, all a lie, caught up in the web of just how many she’s weaved to get here. 

Karen sets her jaw when they wave her in, dressed in black. Either in mourning for her friends, or to be a visible counterpoint to him, there’s no need for specificity when he greets her. 

_ I’m not here for tea. _

And god, Karen had him on the ropes. Dead to rights. But she slips up, she’d come here to unnerve Fisk, to interrogate him. All it takes is one misstep for him to catch on. To dissect everything she’d said and piece it back together with that smug, sycophantic smile twisting his lips.

In an act of desperation, her eyes on the cameras;  _ forgive me, not for what I’ve done, but for what I’m about to do _ .

_ James Wesley.  _ Fisk stirs, sees the hook in her words and bites, 

_ What was it like for you when he disappeared? Really, it’s those first 24 hours that are the worst, aren’t they?  _

_ When you call and you call and you call and there’s just no answer. It becomes an obsession. The calling. The never ending loop of a ghost’s voice mail in your ear.  _

_ You worry.  _

_ You wonder.  _

_ You swear, God damn it, if he’s still living I’m gonna kill him myself.  _ Her heart aches because just right then? Karen’s speaking from a place of experience, an echo of her time with Frank flashes in her eyes but she continues, powers through.

_ Is that what it was like for you? Did you rage at him? Cause you thought he betrayed you?  _

_ Because I wonder what would be worse for you. His duplicity or his death? He died quickly. If you were wondering.  _ Come on, there’s that rage trapped by his knuckles gone white, and he’s shaking with all the effort it takes to cage it.

_ Didn't suffer much. You see, Wilson, Matt Murdock isn't the person you should be worried about. I killed Wesley. I shot him seven times. Because the clip ran out. He deserved more. _

A roar, Karen screams, but the FBI charged in, they stopped his hand after all it’d taken to force it. She’s equal parts frustrated and confused -- how could they have come in just then? But Karen’s eyes, wide, frantically looking for answers to grab hold of -- they land on Foggy, and all of that melts away. She’s left with rage.

It’s misguided, the last person in Hell’s Kitchen that deserved it is Franklin Nelson but he’s insufferably intuitive. 

She’s ignoring him, even if that small part inside of her is grateful that he’d intervened when he did. 

A minute more. A second too late. Fisk really might have killed her; words are hollow though, at least they’d have it on tape. Resentment has fastered so deeply in Karen Page that she’d die to prove a point. It’s haunting. But it isn’t anywhere as bad as the moment she gets home, throwing her clothes into a duffel bag.

Sad, how little she has to take with her. Her life fits in a two foot long slab of vinyl.

Frank’s there, sitting in the shadows with his hand clasped so tightly around his burner it’s a wonder it hadn’t shattered into pieces. 

“What the  _ fuck  _ were you thinking?” He growls out, it’s not the tone that catches Karen by surprise. It’s how quickly Frank had learned about what happened, and made it to her apartment before she did. She shouldn’t focus on the semantics, realistically, but it’s easier than the fear that’s got his eyes tracking her, but seeing little on their journey.

Karen stammers, but he interrupts. She’d never seen Frank like this. She’s seen him with blood on his face, blood on his hands, a knife, a gun, a car rammed into her side. But the way he’s looking at her now? It’s fear, it’s grief, disappointment and something else that sits on the edge of it, just out of sight, a shadow in their shared momentary periphery. 

“No you  _ weren’t  _ thinkin’, Karen,” and shit, the way his voice breaks has Karen stepping up to him, stopping. Frank opens the split on his lip, paws the blood away and stares down to where his fingers shake, useless on his lap. “ ‘cuz what? The last thing I said --- I thought.” He bites those words, feral. He’s so fucking angry at her and it’s got no place to go, no outlet, no vent in the earth to prevent a tectonic shift. Karen feels it, where his trust wavers, it sends aftershocks when she has to cover her mouth to keep from crying out.

“You just… that was real fuckin’ stupid, okay? Just…” Now both hands are shaking, and Karen can’t move. She wants to see how her fingers fit between his, wants to fill his empty palm with hers. 

She doesn’t.

“I kept callin’ you, had that feeling, right? That feeling I got,” his fingertips twitch, curl into fists and she can tell he’s rattling off memories in his head, filters them before he spits them out, “you didn’t answer so I called David an’ you can be pissed about that later. Had him get into your phone.”

He heard, you see, he’d heard every god damned thing Karen said in that room and heard Fisk yell. Heard what she’d said to Nelson about dying on tape.

Frank’s tongue flickers out across his lip, it’s finally stopped bleeding and she’s come one step closer. The heft of his shoulders betray how hard he’s breathing, caught in the shadows of Karen’s half lit apartment.

“What--- what was that, Karen? Were you tryin’ to get yourself killed?” It’s serious, the edge; the plea with her because  _ shit _ , if she doesn’t care enough about herself not to do something this reckless, then you can bet the house that Frank would guilt her into honesty. Hell, she’d done it earlier to him. Fair is fair, whatever shape it takes. It’s gotta be better than this, less sharp on all its edges with him paralyzed by fear and indecision.

Karen shakes her head, fat streaks of sorrow cut down her cheeks, a hiccup, when she finds her voice, “No I just,” she uses the heel of her hand to wipe away the tears. Something to do, other than focus on the longing she won’t give into, the longing to touch him. “I felt trapped. Useless. Fisk’s ruining lives and turning this city on itself. It’s worse than the first time because he’s got everyone convinced he’s doing it through the right channels. That this is legal.. I wanted … to see if he’d talk about his father’s murder. Goad him into a confession -- there’s no statute of limitations on homicide and if they charged him with a crime that predates their agreement he’d go back in prison where he can rot for the rest of his life.” Now that it’s all out in the open, she finally looks at Frank.

He’s shaking his head slowly, but Karen clearing his fear that this had been some half-assed kamikaze run seems to be what he needed to hear. 

“You ever pull a stunt like this again Miss Page,” he stands and it’s like her dream. He’s warm, and broad, and he’s there-- breathing the last of his words against her forehead, sealed with a kiss. “ an’ i’ll put you on house arrest myself.” 

Karen can feel the hesitant smile that works its way onto his lips. 

“Where you headed?” Again, again and again; they live their lives on the same track and sometimes the landmarks all look the same in the direction they’re running so it’s hard to think they aren’t doubling back onto where they’d already been.

“I need to go,” he knows, he knows and the breath he draws in doesn’t break her heart, because she won’t make him take any small part of her regret with him when he left. Where’s safe? She can’t turn to Matt -- he’s wanted, on the run, and it would be the first place Fisk’s lackies look. Karen painted a target on her back, she didn’t get to weep over bullets aimed at its center.

“I might know a place.” Frank sounds wary, he heaves a sigh and continues, arms that much tighter where they’re locked over her shoulders, head tucking itself alongside hers. He’s fumbling with the cell phone he’d, at some point, buried in his pocket - presses redial, and Karen can hear it ring twice before a familiar, gravely voice answers,

“ _Frank_ \-- is Karen okay?” 

“Yeah David, got her here with me uh-- hey uh, I might need to take you up on your offer, from before.” 

“Guest room is already cleared out buddy.” 

Karen wants to protest, she can hear how David smiles on the other end of the line in a way that suggests Frank and him have had a talk like this several times now. It sounds a lot like ‘I told you so’ when he says: see you both soon.

She doesn’t want more innocents dragged into the crosshairs, but she doesn’t have a better suggestion, and silences her worries by sliding her arms around Frank’s neck, and swaying with him in the dark of her apartment for the second time in her life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that little dream sequence was actually a prompt I answered on tumblr, but felt it set that certain tone of what they both want remaining unspoken! Also, we needed a little something soft after a whole lot of sad. The next chapter is from Frank's POV, thank you all for your patience, and for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware this is short, but I'd rather post what I have written than nothing at all and I pray that it'll spark my writing bug and i can finish this fic. Enjoy!

Frank’s gonna kill him. 

David’s already died once so this shit’ll be par for the fucking course.

***

The day he’d dropped him off at home, when the dust settled and for one goddamned minute Frank got to have peace, got to have quiet - he’d watched the tension in David’s back until he disappeared behind his front door. And he’d stared at that, too. The empty space. Fingers twitch over the steering wheel, shifts into first, and left. 

He adapts, Frank always does - he’s a soldier, first and foremost, but without a war to fight there’s no telling what his idle hands might do. 

He’s afraid. 

Going to group yeah it.. It  _ helps _ . Maybe. He can’t tell if he’s healing, makes his palm itch like it might be, but some nights the dreams are just as vivid, he wakes up with shell casings on his bedroom floor and arterial spray in his periphery. 

Curtis gave him shit about it, said that if he’s actually  _ invested  _ in getting better, then he’d speak up, speak out. Frank talks about the Carousel sometimes, the others they .. they don’t placate him with pity. Don’t go all misty eyed and fish around for details - they just  _ get  _ it, and it’s nice. To just  _ be _ , without having his motivations or methodology called into question. No devil suited dipshit telling him what’s what. No guilt. No innocence. No judge, jury, or executioner waiting to cast their votes on the Big Bad Punisher. 

Frank gets to be Pete somedays now, one of the guys at group offered him a contractor gig in Brooklyn. It pays like shit, but it’s familiar. He knew how to hold a hammer, knew how to work until the sun dipped out of the sky. Until his limbs were too heavy with exhaustion to lift. It kept him focused, at the very least. 

So Frank kept busy, kept moving. 

Shit, he’d even traveled. Saw all the sights there were to see in the U.S of A. He felt the mottled dawn and sand kicked up in a lazy summer wind, the smell of joshua trees, while staring out over the grand canyon -  _ just a big hole _ , he’d protested mildly to Maria once, when she suggested they take a road trip with the kids. His heart echoes the dull ache he’s felt every single day since his family was taken from him, but this.. With his wedding ring around his neck, and his thumb sweeping over the engraving inside, felt a bit like he’d taken them with him. 

They finally got to see. 

But he’d cut his trip short, meant to make it out to the pacific, see Disneyland at least once because Lisa had begged and begged and begged -- he was gonna take her, take her and Frankie and Maria once he got his clean discharge and had the money enough burnin’ a hole in his pocket. He was gonna … but he didn’t. Blame sits like a coal on his chest,so there he is now, chugging some shitty black coffee in a diner when it’d flashed across the ten inch screen ducked under the decorative counter hood. It. 

_ Wilson Fisk has been released into FBI custody.  _

And Frank’s promise rang in his ears:  _ next time I see you, only one of us walks away _ . He’s not proud of how he reacts, the chipped ceramic mug he’d been drinking from, shattered in his hand, lodging thick white pieces coated in burnt coffee into his palm. 

He mops up the blood diligently (just because his DNA had been wiped from federal and state databases doesn’t mean Frank’s eager to give any up), and leaves a couple of wadded up bills on the table before he’s gone with a ‘sorry’ to the hostess. Gone into the early grey of night. He’d been hours shy of Santa Monica, a bank of fog rolling in from the north but he leaves with the peaks of a city in his rearview, headed due East with his knuckles white around the wheel of a stolen car. 

He drove and he drove and he drove, mindlessly going through the motions of a living breathing human being. Stopping to sleep only when he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Stopping to eat when the pain in his gut reminded him that had no say otherwise. 

So here he is, now. He’d come to put Wilson Fisk in the ground and now that he knows that Karen’s life is on the line if he doesn’t, the Kingpin is already as good as dead. 

***

He’s gonna kill David Lieberman. 

Not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he’s a conniving little shit who thinks he knows what’s best for Frank. Makes decisions for him, that he doesn’t trust Frank to make on his own.

“Huh?” Frank asks, jaw tense - Karen’s unloaded her stuff from Frank’s van, and is sitting with Sarah in the living room, sharing a bottle of wine. He wanted her to have that, a moment of normalcy, while he tries his damnedest to not kill this sonuvabitch for a third time.

David gives him a  _ look _ , it’s tired, but they both know that Frank’d heard him perfectly fine and is just, at this point, refusing to accept it. “Sorry, one bed. Who do you know that has two beds in one guest room?” Like he’s got logic and reason on his side. Frank’s trigger finger taps against his thigh, eyes sharp and searching while he and David have some quiet, pseudo macho standoff in the hallway. 

“You --” Frank starts, stops, curls his hands into fists and sighs heavily through his nose, upper lip twitching. “I needed some place to keep Karen safe. You offered.  _ You _ . Now you’re tellin’ me that, what? This is how you meddle with my shit, Lieberman?” His voice is low, a hurried whisper which is pretty goddamned telling of his current level of vulnerability. David had griped at Frank plenty of times before, in the bunker, back when shit had a routine - a mess of one, yeah, but when the fuck hadn’t Frank’s life been motivated by which way he’s shooting? 

David crosses his arms, leaning his shoulder against the wall between the photos of him, his kids and Sarah, Frank’s gaze skips across them, before averting to the hardwood floor below, and he sniffs. 

“All I’m saying, Frank --” David does that head-duck thing, trying to catch Frank’s eyes, trying to reassure him that this isn’t some sinister plot. He even comes off as jovial, like he’s doing him a favor or something. “I’ve seen the lengths you’ve gone to, to keep her safe before. And you know that I will do anything I can to help you out - after what you’ve done for me and my family, I’m going to keep you and yours safe, too. Okay? I heard you, before. I know Karen’s .. I know she’s important to you.” And he left it at that - like Frank’s questions and concerns had been adequately addressed (they hadn’t).

“Dinner will be here soon! Ordered pizza, it’s Friday. Which is pizza and movie night.” David announces to the two newcomers, met with Leo cheering loudly, and rushing down the stairs to hug Frank tight. 

“Heya sweetheart,” he rumbles while she bounces in place, squeezing her arms around his middle with all her might. “You taller? You look taller.” Measuring her height against him with his hand Frank laughs, it’s a fond sound that’s just this side of grief. 

“Missed you  _ Pe _ \-- uh, Frank.” Leo catches herself, and smiles up at him. She takes his hand with her two and forcibly tugs him towards the living room and the dining room adjacent. “Mom can Frank pick the movie? You always said we should be welcoming of our guests!” Frank just lifts his free hand in a sign of surrender, smart kid making it look like they’d cooked up this plan together.

“Tell ya what,” Frank eases onto the couch, next to Karen but not implicitly near her. He’s not sure how hot she is on him at the moment, surrounded by a surly pre-teen boy and the firecracker that is Leo Lieberman. “I’ll let you pick, since I know you’ve got good taste in books, figure it’ll be about the same for a movie.” 

Zach groans, looking up from his phone, “she’s just going to put on something sad or girly.” Which, of course, results in Leo throwing a pillow at him and Sarah stepping in between with a finger raised. “Behave.  _ Guests _ . Remember?” The two kids end up chasing one another into the backyard, leaving all the adults to sit in the quiet behind them.

Sarah, trying to break this knot of tension, offers up more wine -

“Absolutely,” Karen answers, raising her glass. Sarah just brings a new bottle with her, sitting on the sectional that wrapped around the far side of the coffee table, David at her side. 

It feels a little too domestic. A little too premeditated. It makes Frank’s skin itch, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, two fists nestled under his jaw. 

Now it’s David who fills the silence, “so the kids just think your apartment is being fumigated. I told them that they can’t talk about Karen or Frank, because we know that Frank’s life has to be kept secret. Leo offered to help if there were any more, and I quote, ‘bad guys he needs to stop’, and Zach just asked if Karen was his girlfriend. Pretty sure your secret is safe.” He chuckles, amused and Sarah tags along in laughing at the ironic turn of events facilitated by their very ..  _ spirited  _ children. 

Karen blushes, and Frank snorts in of ‘of course she did’ sort of way, “yeah hopefully uh, won’t be a burden on you all for too long. Gotta quick fix to this,  _ pest  _ problem.” Frank amends quickly, because Leo and Zach, now breathless, come barreling in through the back door. 

“We want to watch Jurassic Park,” in unison, and Leo steals the remote off of the coffee table, quick to change the TV input while Zach slides the movie into the DVD player underneath. 

As if scripted, the doorbell rings and both Frank and Karen tense in unison. They’re not used to this. To any shade of domesticity and this is a lot for them to adapt to, all at once. Karen’s said a grand total of fifteen words since they’d settled in, and Frank tries to keep the impulse to run, at bay. 

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely and entirely blame Meg for this fic, so you all should as well. By all means, let me know your feelings below and thank each and every single one of you for reading. [find me on tumblr!](http://www.jewishkarenpage.tumblr.com)


End file.
